Complex Mashing Scenarios

[Nosybear]

I don't know if this belongs here or in the Brew Session thread so I took a chance. This is not a feature request, it's something I can handle on my own and it's my Kentucky Common. It's a rather complex mash scenario in that I mash the 6-row and the flaked grains. I cap the sparge with the dark grains and add the molasses with 5 mins remaining in the boil. So, to calculate the mash water volumes, temperatures, salt and acid additions, I have to back out the dark grains and crystal in the water and mash calculators. Then add them back to get the boil gravity and sparge acidification to model my mash capping. Then add the molasses back to get the final gravity.

I don't know that supporting complex scenarios like this is even possible or desirable in a general brewing software package like Brewer's Friend but it's something to think about.

 

[Yooper]

We have been talking about this for a while, including simpler things like adding ingredients to secondary. We have some ideas that we're batting around to make it work.

 

[Nosybear]

Here's how I'm having to handle it:
Enter the entire recipe to get all my "final" values.
Back out whatever is not going into the main mash, in this case, the dark grains I'm capping with.
Do mash and water calculations.
Add the dark grains back in for sparge acidification calculations and boil gravity.
Add the molasses back in for final gravity.

After all my BMC'ing about overcomplicating BF, this might be in that neighborhood. To implement, I'd imagine a dropdown for each fermentable/ingredient with selections like "Mash", "Steep", "Sparge", "Boil", "Fermentor", and any other steps where you can imagine the ingredients would be added. Then the calculators would have to be able to process or ignore the fermentable for each step based on the selection. You'd have to calculate the mash steps and pH based on items marked "Mash", sparge acidification for items marked "Sparge", boil gravity predictions based on both mash and sparge, etc.

I can see how it would work, I just don't know if it's worth the complexity it would bring.